


Champions

by marauder_in_warblerland



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 08:56:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3203351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauder_in_warblerland/pseuds/marauder_in_warblerland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in 6.03, "Jagged Little Tapestry." </p><p>Jane and Mason might have said that they were watching old competition videos, but they never said who “they” included. The New New New Directions visit the past and find out exactly what they’ve gotten themselves into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Champions

_“We’ve been watching YouTubes of the New Directions at regionals and nationals.”_

_“We wanna be as good as you guys were. If we’re gonna do this, we wanna be champions.”_

 --------------

“Have you found the nationals videos yet?”

“No.”

“ . . . How about now?” 

“Nope.”

“Now?”

“Really?” Roderick looked back over his shoulder to find Madison waving and smiling like a proud fifth-grader at a science fair.

He’d spent the last fifteen minutes hunched over Jane’s iPad trying to find old Glee performances on YouTube. Jane watched at his side, while the twins took turns spinning themselves in the astronomy classroom’s single working roller chair. On her turns in the chair, Madison added sound effects, like a tiny, perky propeller whirring around the room.

Roderick rolled his eyes. “We’re almost there, I think. Can’t you wait, like, five minutes until I can figure this out?”

“Well sure I can,” Madison grinned, “but you make better faces when I ask how you’re doing.”

“Another push?” Mason asked, hands already on the back of the chair.

“Yes please!”

Around she went, and Roderick turned back to the screen, only to find Jane giving him the eye.

“Hand over the iPad.” She ordered, from the adjacent plastic chair. “You’re using the wrong search terms, and I only have ten minutes before history class.” 

Roderick held out for almost two fitful seconds before dumping the iPad into her lap. He was using perfectly reasonable search terms, _thank you very much_. It just wasn’t his fault that whoever posted the recordings hadn’t bothered to give them useful titles. How was anyone supposed to know what was in a video called “The one with the whirly kicks”? And what kind of a username was Lord Tubbington?

Roderick scowled, watching Jane poke at the screen, until she gave out a sound like a happy hyena. 

“I found it,” Jane squealed, her hands fluttering over the screen. “Or, I found _something_. That singer in the front, that’s Ms. Berry, isn’t it?” She looked up to Roderick for confirmation and he nodded slowly.

It was her alright, alone in a red dress with a black sash. The video was so fuzzy he could hardly make out her face, but Roderick had still never seen anyone look more comfortable under a spotlight. The rest of the New Directions were barely visible around the edges of the video, but she didn’t seem to need them. She took up the whole stage, as though she’d been born to exist under a pool of light with a chandelier above her head and a chorus swaying in the background. “That’s her,” he said under his breath. “That’s Ms. Berry.”

“She looks exactly the same, doesn’t she?” Jane asked, her voice tinged with wonder.

“Not exactly.” Mason’s voice appeared over Roderick’s shoulder, and when he glanced back he found Madison leaning over his other side. “Who’s the guy?” Mason looked toward Jane and waited for her to do her thing. 

In the last week Jane had established herself as the undisputed McKinley champion of show choir lore. On her second day, the twins challenged her to Glee trivia, which was also why they now owed her a homemade trophy and free lunch for the following month. 

She squinted at the blurry video as the performers stepped together into an easy swing. When Ms. Berry’s partner sang, “I never had a girl looking any better than you did,” they turned to face the audience and— with a gasp— Jane stopped the video.

“I—I,” she stuttered, eyes fixed on the frozen screen, “I think I know who that is.” Her eyes darted up toward Roderick and then back down to the iPad. “Do you remember the picture in the auditorium?" 

Of course he remembered, Roderick thought. She was talking about the picture of the former Glee coach, the guy who— _oh_. He saw the moment when Mason put it together, and then Madison, with a tiny gust of surprise.

“Does that mean—?” Madison stopped, unable to finish the sentence, and Roderick understood why. It was too much to say out loud with his 17 year-old face still filling up the screen. Roderick couldn’t even remember his name.

“I think so,” Jane nodded.

They stared, Jane toward the floor and everyone else toward Jane, until Mason broke the silence. “Can we watch that one?” He pointed at a video along the right side of the screen labeled simply, “Regionals Loserboys.” This time it was a fuzzy image of boys with red and blue piping.

Jane’s eyes narrowed. “The Warblers? Are you serious?” Her voice dropped. “I already feel like a traitor.”

“You’re not a traitor; you’re one of us,” Madison smiled, as her hand landed on Jane’s shoulder. “Plus, nothing perks up a mood faster than matching blazers, right?” Her voice swooped up at the end, like she was asking for another serving of ice cream and Mason nodded violently at her side. Even Roderick shrugged. Blazers certainly couldn’t hurt.

“Fine.” Jane sighed. “You guys are lucky I like you.” She played the next video, cocked her head at the group of boys, and promptly screamed loud enough to wake the dead. At the sound, the twins grabbed onto Roderick’s shoulders, while he grabbed for Jane’s arm and sent the iPad clattering to the floor, still playing a high, pitchy sort of song that Roderick didn’t recognize. Although the voice sounded familiar— 

“Oh my god,” the twins gasped in unison. 

“It’s him!” Jane squeaked. “It’s Mr. Hummel.” Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates as she scooped the iPad off of the floor and maximized the screen. “I must have seen this performance a thousand times, but I didn’t recognize him. How could I?” 

On the screen, a boy with brown hair and anxious eyes stepped out into a solo followed closely by another boy with gelled hair who— “Wait a minute,” Roderick said, louder than he intended, “that’s the guy who showed up in the auditorium last week!”

“That’s Mr. Anderson.” Jane looked like she was going to be sick. “He’s the coach of the Warblers.”

“But he used to be on the New Directions?” Mason asked. 

“I guess so,” Jane murmured. “He didn’t tell me.” 

“And he and Mr. Hummel used to—?” Madison raised her eyebrows at the video, where the duet was still going strong.

Jane balked. “You don’t know that!” 

“Yes I do,” Madison giggled. “I mean, look at them.”

She had a point, Roderick thought. It was weird. On the screen, Mr. Hummel and Mr. Anderson might as well have been the only two people in the room, let alone on stage. The way they were staring at each other felt almost intimate, like they’d forgotten they were in the middle of a competition. No wonder they lost. 

“What if they were together, but the rigors of show choir pulled them apart?” Madison gasped. “Oh my god, it would have been devastating. Maybe they were in love, but they couldn’t take the pressures of the competitive circuit! We heard that Glee used to be really intense.”

Mason sucked in a breath. “What if it happened at Nationals?”

“Oh no. That would be— _oh no_.” 

“What if they made if all the way to the top only to lose the one thing that they loved even more than performing? This—this is just _awful_.” Mason said, lost in the horror. “How do they even get up in the morning?”

“I have no idea.”

While Mason and Madison spun an elaborate web of possibilities, Jane went back to staring at the screen, now frozen on Kurt’s face. “Do you think it’s true?” she asked quietly. 

Roderick shrugged. “I don’t know. It would explain a lot, but it would also be—” He wanted to say that it would be hard or frustrating or even impossible, but none of those words seemed strong enough to describe coming back home and competing with your ex.

Jane nodded, a hint of a smile at the corner of her lips. “Wow,” she said, “learning about the old New Directions really is like cutting open an onion.”

“Because of the layers or the tears?”

“Yes.”

\----------

Eventually, Mason and Madison worked themselves back from their frenzy of imagination.

[They finally decided that Mr. Hummel and Mr. Anderson’s tragic romance had fallen apart at Nationals when they were in high school, but that meant that they were destined to come back together in a grand medley of love at this year’s Nationals competition. The story had such symmetry. It also meant that the New Directions would have to get to Nationals or else the great show choir romance of their times would be doomed forever . . .]

Of course, by time Madison and Mason came back to earth, Jane and Roderick were almost falling off of their chairs with laughter, grabbing their sides and holding back tears for reasons they couldn’t explain.

An onion.

Jane said it again and off they went into another peal of laughter. An _onion_. Roderick couldn’t breath. They had chosen to join this onion of a singing group full of incestuous relationships and crying and constant proposals of marriage. _What was wrong with them?_ Roderick wondered, _Why would they do this to themselves?_ Jane looked up into Mason’s confused face and laughed like a banshee. The answer was obvious. Like it or not, those people in the videos were _their people_. Those insane, talented, brilliant, walking disaster zones who got themselves engaged in bacon t-shirts were their destiny.

It was horrifying, but it was also kind of beautiful.

Roderick caught Jane’s eyes as they caught their breath and, together, they turned back to the iPad as the twins draped themselves over their shoulders. As a tiny team, they un-paused the video and watched, happy tears still streaming down their cheeks. 


End file.
